Our babies were taken after 'biased' parenting test
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
This is completely different and fully dystopic, though. looking at Rorschach tests? cultural trivia like asking about mother Teresa? What is happenning in denmark that allows this process to exist?
I feel this part is also particularly damning:
>Like Zammi, her son was meant to have been taken away immediately after birth.
>But because he was born prematurely on Boxing Day and social workers were on holiday, she and her husband Ulrik got to keep him for 17 days.
So the state decides that the child is in enough danger to justify removal from their family. Let's say they truly, honestly believe this is a dangerous enough situation to justify the measure. It is then fine to leave the newborn with those parents for weeks due to scheduling conflicts?
Is that a part of their evaluation process? Good Lord.
Some real eugenicsy vibes.
Reading what was being tested, playing with dolls, trivia, and math problems. That's just insane. You need none of that to be a good parent.
The closest I could see to doing a test like that is if you wanted to administer a dementia test. You know, something that could actually get the kid seriously harmed.
There are cases when a state should take away a kid. But it should be because the kid is in danger, not because the parents can't pass a trivia game.
Really? Such as? Because if what you care about is the child, the child's future, even in absurdly extreme cases birth parents turn out to be better:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/05/980505092617.h...
And the closer the family bond, the better children fare. Which means "state care" is always the worst option. Unrelated foster care is the second worst option.
Study after study shows bad situations ... and always state intervention is the worst option. Take the child away when the parents are arrested? Or put the kid in jail too? Best option turns out to be ... let the kid stay in jail too.
Drug addicts refuse treatment? Best option for the kid? State care or just leave them? Best option turns out to leave them.
And even truly extreme: actual, bona fide abuse. Which in 99% of cases is the kid just being left home alone for too long btw. What is best? State intervention or leaving the kid there? Best is leaving the kid there.
Violence at home? Whether it's witnessing violence or actual victimization: best option is to leave the kid at home (and of course, often it's the state's fault, for example failing to protect a mother from an ex-husband)
Parents want to get rid of a child? Best option is to refuse to help.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that "the state should take away the child" should never be used as long as the parents or any family willing to help are even alive.
Because, study the system and you will quickly see how it really works. You will find foster care is only forced on the parents and the children. Foster parents want to get rid of a kid? Easy. A care home wants to get rid of a child? Even if the kid ends up on the street that's easy. Of course, nobody suggests changing that. In those cases, of course, the parents get punished, not "professionals" *. And, of course, child protection cannot be forced to care for a child through studies (but parents can). And so on.
* this, despite the fact that punishing the parents is often not possible. If the parents have nothing, what are you going to do. Of course, even if child protection or social workers are very much involved in the problems of the parents (e.g. the parents were foster kids themselves), they cannot be forced to deal with the consequences.
I'm not saying that removing a child is something that should be done lightly or often. And preferentially, if it is done it's not permanent.
I'm saying there are extreme cases, such as a child being in actual danger of death, in which that's the only option.
And that is just not what child protection does for the reason explained.
And the same appears to be true in Denmark/Greenland:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godhavn_inquiry
Which brings the question: are you protecting children from child sexual abuse if you take them into the system? No, you're not.
It gets much worse: in fact you are causing child sexual abuse. When the UN researched it worldwide you see: child abuse (violent or sexual) happens most at schools, over half of the total. That is the big source of child sexual abuse (~half by other children, ~half by staff). Obviously youth institutions do nothing to protect children against this. In second place ... are youth institutions themselves. Additionally: it is exceedingly rare for children to be abused by their birth parents. If abuse happens at home, the biggest share is at home, but not by family members, then "reconstituted" families (2nd or 3rd marriage with kids from multiple marriages, and usually between non-siblings, not the parents), then reconstituted families the parents with not-their own children, and then the last 0.3% or so of child sexual abuse is by the parents.
(and so, yes, "most" sexual abuse does not start with a predator going after kids, it happens because someone who works a lot with children gets the opportunity and cannot say "no" when it is really easy, and this is the vast majority. In other words, while obviously keeping predators away from kids is important, don't expect it to lower the numbers much. And ... where do people work a lot with children? Schools, school-related sports, and youth services)
You want to prevent child sexual abuse? NEVER place kids in a position where they are continuously dependent on a stranger. Just never do that. Of course, I realize, no form of youth services can work without doing that.
The problem with this is "medical statistics". You take a lot of kids, almost never for sexual abuse, out of the home situation, where the odds of sexual abuse by parents are something like 3/100000 or so, and "protect them", by placing them into an institution where something like 10% of girls get abused, and 5% or so of boys. Obviously this massively increases the number of child sexual abuse victims, it does not decrease them.
Yeah, I’m sure people I know who were raped as children, abused and prostituded by drug addict parents and watched their siblings die from said drugs would have been immensely worse off away from pedophiles and drug addicts.
Although, at the very least, perhaps we can accept forced sterilization for such people. At the least keep it from expanding.
Surprised at your reaction. It is well known that several of the Nordics have historically have fairly questionable processes when it came to the indigenous people. Eugenics sounding processes given the euphemism word "assimilation process". The Sami people are still suffering from the legacy of these processes in Norway and Finland. This is no different than the Canadian whitening policy via cultural assimilation via one way adoption, one way intermarry, residential schools, etc. Australia had the same thing. Virtually, every colonised country where the colonised population wasn't wiped out right had similar processes on them.
I think people on here often have an overly rosy views of the Nordics due to the surveys ranking them as the happiest people in the world.
Let us remember that this is the same country that has guetto laws defined as places with less than 50% western people. And yes, the Danish word for "guetto" was in the official documents and it actually only got removed 4 years ago
In particular it obscures what is fundamental to the conflict, which is state/settled vs non-state/tribal, not one group being native to the land and the other being some sort of outside occupying force.
In 2024. For most parents the correct answer would be "someone who died before I was born", but in the case of this particular mother it is "someone who died before I was a teenager".
I'm not sure it's ever been relevant cultural trivia for Denmark and is irrelevant to modern culture anywhere.
I would first ask what happened such that Denmark owns Greenland in the first place, because it's all part of the same process, same as this:
> Thousands of Inuit women and girls were fitted with an intrauterine device (IUD), commonly known as a coil, during the 1960s and 70s... it is unclear how many cases lacked consent or proper explanation.
> Among those affected were girls as young as 12, and several have stated publicly that they were not properly informed.
I think there is some misunderstanding of the issue here. While Greenland isn’t fully independent, many domains, including social services and child protective services in Greenland are managed by Greenland itself, not by Denmark.
But the controversial tests described in the article did not happen in Greenland - They happened in Denmark, but they were considered unfairly biased aginst Greenlandic parents living in Denmark.
I believe this is called "colonialism".
"Let's have the next generation be the best possible, as they are innocent and never chose life, let them thusly get the best life"
"Let us assess the parents Nurture ability, and if not to our standards, we most assuredly will for sure provide a high quality Nurture environment, super promise it will always work"
"Oh, that worked so well, let us assess Nature in the whole Nature vs Nurture topic, let us assess the genetic health of parents and ensure the next generation is genetically superior"
It's playing with damn fire you ask me
I didn't have the first idea how to even hold a baby before mine arrived. This test is insane and the psychologists involved should be imprisoned.
This is not a foot soldier "just doing their job" ignorant of its rammifications. This is an educated, motivated person with transferrable skills who has chosen to enthusiastically engage in systematic oppression. This class of person is incompatible with society.
There are alternatives to imprisonment for people who rip babies from mother's arms in service of cultural erasure/eugenics, but I don't want to stoop to their level by advocating for them.
Treated like the clowns they were behaving as.
I’ll be honest, I don’t know off hand how long it takes for sun rays to reach the earth.
Absolutely not. First, a light-day is a distance, not a unit of time. Second, Voyager 1 is almost 1 light day from the sun. The earth is approximately 0.5% of a light-day from the sun.
https://secure.splcenter.org/page/67431/survey/1
https://www.openculture.com/2024/10/take-the-near-impossible...
Beyond the (in)famous and awful situation with the history of residential schools, there's been a decades long (ab)use of the social work & family services sector to demolish indigenous family structures among First Nations in Canada.
e.g. https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/first-nations-child-welfa...
Or just read anything written in the last couple decades by Cindy Blackstock (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cindy_Blackstock)
Often it starts with seemingly well meaning social workers dealing with actual real risks of harm to children in communities with high rates of poverty and alcoholism and domestic abuse on account of centuries of problems... but the bureaucracy gets used in terrible and insensitive ways. And in the end children get taken from their parents and put into foster care, ripped away from their culture, language, history.
edit: Down votes for providing a correction? Alright.
> When Johanne was asked in 2019 what she saw during a Rorschach test - a psychological test where people are asked what they see when looking at ink-blot images - she said she saw a woman gutting a seal, a familiar sight in Greenland's hunting culture.
> Johanne alleges that on hearing this answer the psychologist called her a "barbarian".
Using a Rorschach test here seems designed to make this "test" so subjective that anyone could fail it if the invigilators want them to. Inkblot tests? In 2019, to decide if someone's a fit parent? That shouldn't pass the laugh test. You don't have to be an expert to think that's an obviously bad idea.
That's a faulty reading of my comment. I did not touch upon if this is anti-indigenous or not (it is btw). You also fundamentally misrepresent what I wrote with the "they test everyone". Misunderstanding what is actually going on here, even with righteous vitriol, is not going to help anyone.
How is this determined?
Which is the approval rate of the test? Let's made up 50%. Is it because the preselection is very accurate or because the test is unnecessary hard?
Would you volunteer to take the test if the consequence is that they will remove your children if you fail?
Even if everyone take the test, rich people will pay a trainer to prepare for the test. Like
fake quote> If you see [the main hero of Denmark] heroically removing the eyes of [most evil enemy of Denmark], then you should reply: Three flowers in a pot.
Perhaps the eyes removal makes no sense in the Denmark mythology, but just fill with a similar one. Here in Argentina, it may be "San Martin cutting people in half with his saber in San Lorenzo".
A possible to solution is that each day a random member of congress or minister or judge or king/queen/heirs is selected. If they fail, they get banned from any public position for 18 years (because taking away their children is too much for me). If the test is fair, they don't have anything to worry about.
For example:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/first-nations-child-welfa...
"The payments are part of a $23.4-billion settlement for people removed from their homes on reserve or in the Yukon and placed in care funded by Indigenous Services Canada between April 1, 1991, and March 31, 2022."
Note the dates -- well after the residential school closures.
Or:
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/41-20-0002/4120000220240...
"Indigenous children are vastly overrepresented among foster children in Canada. In 2021, Indigenous children accounted for 7.7% of all children under age 15 in the general population, but 53.8% of children in foster care (Statistics Canada, 2022).Note The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (2021) has reported on how this overrepresentation within the child welfare system is a legacy of the residential school system and a perpetuation of a history of colonial policies and practices that have separated Indigenous children from their families and communities."
The situation is especially bad in Manitoba.
https://globalnews.ca/video/11122619/1-in-2-manitoba-first-n...
This is by no means a past problem.
what happens if a parent answers that they believe the Earth is flat?
Make a biased test, call it impartial, then use it to ruin the lives of people who don’t meet some perceived standard.
Tell me how does reciting the alphabet backwards in a foreign language tongue mean one is a good parent?
"Greenlandic children born in Denmark are five times more likely to be taken away from their parents compared with other children in Denmark."
It’s also a popular article trending on multiple aggregators, I read it elsewhere this morning.
What was described in the article sounded more like answers to questions on the game show Jeopardy.
I can only see a couple cases of clear abuse where this should happen.
But intelligence should NEVER be a reason to take kids from parents.
This is so dystopian. Next step is to take your kids if you don't have the right opinions or political views?
Kids are also way more likely to be abused in foster care. Social workers have really gotten out of hand in a lot of places.
Outside of clear abuse this is one of the worst things a human can do
> But critics say they cannot meaningfully predict whether someone will make a good parent.
1) If that is a problem, then just shut the child protection agency. Because subjective evidence of social workers and other "experts" ALSO cannot meaningfully predict that (besides, we all know what education social workers get, ie. 6 months of legendarily easy theory with zero tests. There are barely any psychologists "in the system" and psychiatrists ... well, has anyone seen any at all?)
2) I find it baffling the real issue is never discussed. What fundamentally matters is whether the situation of children in government care, with the help of social workers and other "experts", is better than children abused at home. Is that the case?
NO, it isn't!
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3135630/
https://mitsloan.mit.edu/shared/ods/documents?PublicationDoc...
and most dramatic:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/05/980505092617.h...
Study after study shows the same pattern. Again, and again, and again: even abusive birth parents or absent ones or addicts or ... with AND without any help (including the ones that refuse help) are better caregivers than "professionals". And that's ignoring the real, horrible, problem.
The real problem is that children who get abused generally become abusive themselves. This causes professionals to refuse these children, because they cannot deal with such children, and even if they can, they get stronger, smarter and sneakyer every year, while professionals don't. Of course, they do need children, otherwise not even the most absurd politician will let them keep their job.
So ... they are regularly accused of "filling beds". Which essentially means foster care is full of children who don't need or want foster care AND children who do want foster care can't get or stay in the system.
This is why obvious, simple rules that would force the system to work for children aren't allowed to exist. For example, above a minimal age, say 8 years or even 12, you could say that without agreement from the child they cannot be kept against their will. If such a rule exists, you can just shut child protection since almost no children will choose child protection, and those that do will be the worst ones the system doesn't want.
Social worker is a 3 1/2 year education in Denmark.
So let's check an actual social worker job in Denmark, working with these children. Nope. Denmark is the same as everywhere else. No requirements. If I understand this page (I'm using Firefox translate) correctly they state they're flexible if you don't even know the language.
https://midtjob.dk/ad/paedagog-omsorgsmedhjaelper-eller-ande...
So I think it's safe to say: the social workers in Denmark, who actually work with children, doesn't require any education at all, nothing, nada, zero, niente, just like everywhere else, and clearly: some don't even know the language the children speak.
This very, very large difference in what people think they know about the child protection system and what actually happens is extremely common everywhere, including in the Netherlands. Another point where people often have no idea how bad things really are is how locked up these children are in these institutions. One can make comparisons to point out how ridiculous it is: in the Netherlands a high security prisoner additionally punished with isolation on death row (yes, the Netherlands has a death row, just no executions) has significantly more rights than children in state care. (Some) children in care are isolated in a room 23 hours per day and are not allowed any personal effects, and never get to see other children. On death row, in isolation, you are isolated in a bigger room with a shower and a TV, and you're allowed personal effects like books. You also get 1h with other prisoners in the open air. Also, ironically, a prisoner on death row cannot be denied access to an (if necessary free) lawyer (children don't get lawyers, despite having to appear before a judge regularly. Not that those legally required judge appearances aren't often canceled), and also prisoners have the right to an education and whatever that requires (including web meetings with teaching staff, as many as required). The prison literally pays for the books. Some children in state care can and are denied education, and none get their books paid by the institution.
FWIW my parents did a trip up to Baffin Island and then across to Greenland briefly some years ago. They said the living standards of the Inuit on the Greenland side were immediately and obviously much better. Better housing, infrastructure. They shared their photos.
That's not to say the Danish are saints. They are implicated in the same kind of colonial shenanigans as Canadian settlers.
In any case the US has no business there.
There does need to be stronger trade links between Canada (and the US probably) and Greenland. Canada only just now opened a consulate there for the first time in history. Same with cultural and linguistic links, I would expect as well.
I was watching an interview with a Greenlandic politician and he was pointing out how right now all trade between Canada and Greenland goes through Denmark first and then to Greenland. Which is preposterous considering proximity. Canada has a free trade agreement with the EU, and therefore Denmark and therefore Greenland, but the physical trade infrastructure is inadequate.